Wired and wireless networks, such as mobile telecommunication networks, local area networks, positioning systems, broadcasting systems, sensor (e.g., biomedical sensor) networks and other networks using ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) radio bands, have become essential for modern daily life. In a network, when a transmitter needs to send digital information to a receiver, the transmitter encodes the digital information to a digital base-band (BB) signal, converts the digital base-band signal to an analog base-band signal, modulates (up-converts) the analog base-band signal to a radio-frequency (RF) signal by mixing the analog base-band signal with a local oscillation (LO) signal generated by the transmitter, and performs power amplification to amplify the RF signal, such that the RF signal can be transmitted via network medium (e.g., air for wireless network). When the receiver receives the RF signal, it amplifies the received RF signal, demodulates (down-converts) the RF signal to a demodulated signal by mixing the RF signal with a local oscillation signal generated by the receiver, such that the digital information can be retrieved from the demodulated signal.
From aforementioned operation of network, it is understood that signal mixing and amplifying are of key importance. For the transmitter, a large amount of power is consumed for power amplification and signal mixing. Besides power amplification which consumes the most power, signal mixing consumes less but comparable power, since prior art signal mixing is implemented by Gilbert mixers which include many active components (e.g., transistors) to dissipate currents, especially DC (direct-current) currents. As more networks have to operate under limited power (e.g., power supplied by battery), demands for low-power and low-supply (e.g., low supply voltage) emerge.
For a low-power transmitter, replacing active components by passive ones saves power. Thus, a prior art employs a passive mixer implemented by a switch transistor having a gate, a drain and a source respectively coupled to the LO signal, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and a power amplifier (PA); as the switch transistor turns on and off in response to alternating of the LO signal, the analog BB signal provided by the DAC is mixed with the LO signal and sent to the PA for power amplification. However, because the DAC has to drive input of the PA at frequency of the LO signal, the DAC needs to be implemented by current sources which drain a large amount of DC current. Hence, power saving effect of such prior art is quite limited.